"The big crazy."

walahi ya zalame

You swear?

Any more steely words from Steele?

War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders

NYT 1/14/08

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/world/middleeast/15fatah.html?_r=1&hp

"Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.

But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters."

Israel and the US went to all the trouble of building a client government on the ashes of the old Fatah, only to saddle it with a glaring legitimacy problem.

As I've said from the beginning, this attack--even from a completely self-interested and calloused Israeli perspective--has been a completely upside down strategy. It may give Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak some political cred at home for a month or two during the elections, but whichever the party in power come March, there's going to be hell to pay from both territories. This is especially important to note, because the West Bank had largely been exhausted after eight years of suffocating closures and Israeli operations, and placated by the chance to participate in a democratic system. That's all gone now with this attack on Gaza. Indeed, because of the attack, Abbas finds himself in an odd position, locked into his presidency without legitimacy and without the cloak of Democracy the US and Israel sought to shield him with as an antidote to other groups like Hamas. Because there can be no elections, and Abbas' term is over, he is for all intents and purposes a dictator--one enabled by Israel. As far away from reconciliation as Fatah and Hamas were six weeks ago, they are a million light years from there right now.

And though certainly nothing good will come of this for Palestinians in either territory, the repurcussions for Israelis (and possibly the US) will be felt for years to come.

In last Saturday's LA Times, Alan Dershowitz had a op-ed presenting his patented human-shields defense for Palestinian casualties at the hands of the IDF.

My response, including a link to his op-ed, is here: http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/2930

"Dershowitz on Hamas"Gawd, I've heard of some bad porn in my time but takes the biscuit. As to who exactly was on top doesn't bear thinking about.

Greenwald completely misunderstand's Friedman's position in his piece today. Friedman is not saying the war is good. He's trying to explain what he sees as Israel's logic. At no point in his piece does he praise that brutal logic. Friedman is trying to call Hamas to order as much as Israel, fully aware that Hamas' lunacy is as bad as Israel's, just with fewer white-phosphorescent toys to throw.

Greenwald is so angry with Israel (as most of us are) that he's looking for Israeli apologists to vent on. It's crummy thinking, and boring journalism.

(As for Friedman's other NYT pieces, I have not read enough of them to have an opinion.)

The United States is complicit in Israel's war crimes. Everything the latter does is with America's knowledge or approval, or both. The U.S. stands by while Israel kills children, denies medical services to the injured, refuses to allow international representatives in Gaza, and the like. We let Israel hide behind America's apron stings. Yes, we're complicit. (By the way, it looks like "Commando Hillary" Clinton will be confirmed as Secretary of State. She'll take her orders straight from Tel Aviv.)

To repeat only to emphasize: Tom ("Suck on this") Friedman is a chickenhawk douche bag. I'm only sorry that this apologist for war crimes can't be sent to Iraq.

..from a Zionist nutcase like this guy? He is just an opportunistic creep and should be thoroughly ignored. I would not waste my time on his drivel if i were you Glenn as he is obviously running out of any odeas and losing his small mind. he shows in this article that he has laready lost his soul with comments about how Israel is teaching Palestinians a lesson. the omly lesson Israel is teaching anyone is that they are ruthless, cold blooded and immoral child killers on a grand scale. friedman is a moron!

I'm not sure:

by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population

is "euphemism free". It is quite purposeful for Friedman to use "heavy death toll" when it comes to militants, and "Heavy pain" when it comes to the population. Especially when one can guess that the heaviest death toll is on the population, not the militants.

True, "heavy pain" could refer to other things than the death toll--injuries, infrastructure destruction etc. But, by the same token, one could argue that "heavy pain" in a more general sense is inflicted on the militants and their goals.

So Friedman stops short of admitting that, when it comes to the population, what exerts the most pain is the death toll itself. Still a coward.

I've waded through most of the dreck on this thread, and I'll say what I said on the Bill Moyers thread:

As a card-carrying progressive myself, I am aghast at what passes for discourse here. Childish insults, mindless repetition of the most inane and irrelevant and simplistic lefty talking points, and hatred and vitriol that would make Meshal himself a happy man. Worst of all, it's so incredibly and stupidly ignorant. None of you so-called great thinkers show any capability for analytic thought, or any ability to tease out nuance and construct a reasonable argument, or any reasonable knowledge of the relevant history of the region or peoples.

If you're educated, you should demand a refund.

(As for Friedman's other NYT pieces, I have not read enough of them to have an opinion.)

Well then. I guess that settles that.

All of the suffering in Gaza – indeed, all of the suffering endured by Palestinians under Israeli occupation for the last eight years – could have been avoided if Israel negotiated a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat when it had the chance, in 2001.

What chance? The official Israeli position is that there was no chance, "no partner for peace." That's what Israeli leaders heard from their Military Intelligence (MI) service in 2000 after the failure of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David. Arafat scuttled those talks, MI told the leaders, because he was planning to set off a new round of violence, a second intifada.

Now former top officials of MI say the whole story, painting Arafat as a terrorist out to destroy Israel, was an intentional fiction. That's the most explosive finding in an investigative report just published in Israel's top newspaper, Ha'aretz, by one of its finest journalists, Akiva Eldar.

Read it here:

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/chernus.php?articleid=14070

or click sig